This is a List of famines in China, part of the series of lists of disasters in China. Between 108 BC and 1911 AD, there were no fewer than 1,828 recorded famines in China, or once nearly every year in one province or another. The famines varied in severity. [1] [2]
| Name | Time | Region | Context | Estimated number of dead |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 875–884 | Peasant rebellion in China inspired by famine; Huang Chao captured capital | |||
| Chinese famine of 1333-1337 | 1333–1337 [3] | Famine in China | 6 million [4] | |
| 1630–1631 | Northwestern China | Eventually causing the Ming dynasty to collapse in 1644 | ||
| 1810, 1811, 1846, 1849 | Unknown (45 million population decrease, unknown how many emigrated or avoided census to evade taxes) [5] | |||
| 1850–1873 | Nian Rebellion, Taiping Rebellion and drought | Primarily caused by famine, lower life expectancy and plague in the case of the Nian rebellion, the total war casualties are claimed to possibly be 10–30 million people [6] [7] | ||
| Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–79 | 1876–1879 | Mostly Shanxi (5.5 million dead), also in Zhili (2.5 million), Henan (1 million) and Shandong (0.5 million). [8] | Drought | 9.5–13 million [9] |
| Northern Chinese Famine of 1901 | 1901 | Shanxi, Shaanxi, Inner Mongolia | The drought from 1898-1901 led to a fear of famine, which was a leading cause of Boxer Rebellion. The famine eventually came in Spring 1901. [10] | 0.2 million in Shanxi, the worst hit province. |
| Chinese famine of 1906–1907 | 1906-07 | northern Anhui, northern Jiangsu | 20-25 million [11] | |
| Chinese famine of 1920-1921 | 1920–1921 | Henan, Shandong, Shanxi, Shaanxi, southern Zhili (Hebei) | 0.5 million [12] | |
| Chinese famine of 1928–30 | 1928–1930 | Northern China | Drought, wartime constraints, and inefficiency of relief [13] | <6 million [14] |
| 1942–1943 famine | 1942–1943 | Mainly Henan | Second Sino-Japanese War | 0.7-1 million [15] |
| Great Chinese Famine | 1959–61 [16] | Half of the country, in particular Anhui (18% died), Chongqing (15% died), Sichuan (13% died), Guizhou (11% died), Hunan (8% died) [17] | Great Leap Forward, Floods, Droughts, Typhoons, Insect Invasion [18] | 17 million to 45 million [19] [17] [20] |
In China famines have been an ongoing problem for thousands of years. From the Shang dynasty (16th-11th century BC) until the founding of modern China, chroniclers have regularly described recurring disasters. There have always been times and places where rains have failed, especially in the northwest of China, and this has led to famine.
It was the task of the Emperor of China to provide, as necessary, to famine areas and transport foods from other areas and to distribute them. The reputation of an emperor depended on how he succeeded. National famines occurred even when the drought areas were too large, especially when simultaneously larger areas of flooded rivers were over their banks and thus additionally crop failures occurred, or when the central government did not have sufficient reserves. If an emperor could not prevent a famine, he lost prestige and legitimacy. It was said that he had lost the Mandate of Heaven.
Qing China built an elaborate system designed to minimize famine deaths. The system was destroyed in the Taiping Rebellion of the 1850s. [21] [22]
Henan is a landlocked province of China, in the central part of the country. Henan is often referred to as Zhongyuan or Zhongzhou (中州), which literally means "central plain" or "midland", although the name is also applied to the entirety of China proper. Henan is a birthplace of Han Chinese civilization, with over 3,200 years of recorded history and remained China's cultural, economic and political center until approximately 1,000 years ago.
Jilin is one of the three provinces of Northeast China. Its capital and largest city is Changchun. Jilin borders North Korea and Russia to the east, Heilongjiang to the north, Liaoning to the south, and Inner Mongolia to the west. Along with the rest of Northeast China, Jilin underwent an early period of industrialization. However, Jilin's economy, characterized by heavy industry, has been facing economic difficulties with privatization. This prompted the central government to undertake a campaign called "Revitalize the Northeast". The region contains large deposits of oil shale.
Ningxia, officially the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, is an autonomous region in the northwest of the People's Republic of China. Formerly a province, Ningxia was incorporated into Gansu in 1954 but was later separated from Gansu in 1958 and reconstituted as an autonomous region for the Hui people, one of the 56 officially recognised nationalities of China. Twenty percent of China's Hui population lives in Ningxia.
The Great Chinese Famine was a famine that occurred between 1959 and 1961 in the People's Republic of China (PRC). Some scholars have also included the years 1958 or 1962. It is widely regarded as the deadliest famine and one of the greatest man-made disasters in human history, with an estimated death toll due to starvation that ranges in the tens of millions. The most stricken provinces were Anhui, Chongqing (15%), Sichuan (13%), Guizhou (11%) and Hunan (8%).
The autonomous regions are one of four types of province-level divisions of China. Like Chinese provinces, an autonomous region has its own local government, but under Chinese law, an autonomous region has more legislative rights, such as the right to "formulate self-government regulations and other separate regulations." An autonomous region is the highest level of minority autonomous entity in China, which has a comparably higher population of a particular minority ethnic group.
A granary is a storehouse or room in a barn for threshed grain or animal feed. Ancient or primitive granaries are most often made of pottery. Granaries are often built above the ground to keep the stored food away from mice and other animals and from floods.
The 1938 Yellow River flood was a man-made flood from June 1938 to January 1947 created by the Chinese National Army's intentional destruction of dikes (levees) on the Yellow River. The first wave of floods hit Zhongmu County on 13 June 1938.
Pingliang is a prefecture-level city in eastern Gansu province, China, bordering Shaanxi province to the south and east and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region to the north. The city was established in 376 AD. It has a residential population of 2,125,300 in 2019. The urban population is almost 900,000.
Wugang is a county-level city in Hunan Province, China. It is under the administration of Shaoyang prefecture-level city. Located on the southwest of the province and middle of Shaoyang's jurisdiction, the city is bordered to the north by Dongkou and Longhui Counties, to the west by Suining County, to the southwest by Chengbu County, to the southeast by Xinning County, to the northeast by Shaoyang County. Wugang City covers 1,539 km2 (594 sq mi), as of the 2010 census, the city had a registered population of 810,003 and a resident population of 734,870; In 2014, it had a registered population of 834,868 and a resident population of 759,312. The city has four subdistricts, 11 towns and three townships under its jurisdiction, the government seat is Shuiximen Subdistrict.
The 1920 Haiyuan earthquake occurred on December 16 in Haiyuan County, Ningxia Province, Republic of China at 19:05:53. It was also called the 1920 Gansu earthquake because Ningxia was a part of Gansu Province when the earthquake occurred. It caused destruction in the Lijunbu-Haiyuan-Ganyanchi area and was assigned the maximum intensity on the Mercalli intensity scale. About 258,707~273,407 died, making it one of the most fatal earthquakes in China, in turn making it one of the worst disasters in China by death toll.
Yang Jisheng is a Chinese journalist and author. His work include Tombstone (墓碑), a comprehensive account of the Great Chinese Famine during the Great Leap Forward, and The World Turned Upside Down (天地翻覆), a history of the Cultural Revolution. Yang joined the Communist Party in 1964 and graduated from Tsinghua University in 1966. He promptly joined Xinhua News Agency, where he worked until his retirement in 2001. His loyalty to the party was destroyed by the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre.
Feixi County is a county of Anhui Province, East China, it is under the administration of the prefecture-level city of Hefei, the capital of Anhui. The county has an area of 2,053.19 km2 (792.74 sq mi) and a population of 858,895 inhabitants.
The Northern Chinese Famine of 1876–1879 was marked by drought-induced crop failures and subsequent widespread starvation. Between 9.5 and 13 million people in China died mostly in Shanxi province, but also in Zhili, Henan and Shandong. The population reduction in censuses, which include famine migration, shows a drop of 23 million people, among which Shanxi lost 48%, Shaanxi lost 25%, Henan lost 22%. The drought began in 1875 and was influenced by the El Niño-Southern Oscillation.
The Chinese famine of 1928–1930 occurred as widespread drought hit Northwestern and Northern China, most notably in the provinces of Henan, Shaanxi and Gansu. Mortality is estimated to be within 6 million, which already included deaths from famine-led diseases. The inefficiency of relief has been pointed out as a factor which aggravated the famine.
China's family planning policies have included specific birth quotas as well as harsh enforcements of such quotas. Together, these elements constitute the population planning program of the People's Republic of China. China's program should not be confused with the family planning programs instituted in other countries, which were designed to encourage parents to have the number of children they desired—in China, the provision of contraception through family planning programs was subservient to a birth planning program under which the government designated how many births parents could have in order to control the size of its population.
Events from the year 1879 in China.
The Chinese famine of 1906–1907 struck the middle and lower course of Huai River in Qing Dynasty from Autumn 1906 to Spring 1907, administratively in northern Anhui and northern Jiangsu provinces. This Chinese famine was directly caused by the 1906 China floods, which hit the Huai River particularly hard and destroyed both the summer and autumn harvest.
The authorities are assured that in Shansi five millions and a half, in Honan one million, in Shantung half a million, and in Chili two millions and a half have perished, and there is unfortunately too much reason to believe that the enormous total of nine and a half millions is substantially correct.
In Gansu the estimated mortality was 2.5 to 3 million [...] In Shaanxi, out of a population of 13 million, an estimated 3 million died of hunger or disease
A detailed survey organized by the Nationalist government in 1943 of the impact of the famine came up with a toll of 1,484,983, broken down by county. The official population registers of Henan show a net decline in population from 1942 to 1943 of one million people, or 3 per cent of the population. If we assume that the natural rate of increase in the population before the famine was 2 per cent, [...] Comparison with the diminution in the size of age cohorts born during the famine years suggests that the official Nationalist figure includes population loss through excess mortality and declined fertility migration, which leaves a famine death toll of well under 1 million.
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